Abstract
The contours of journalistic practice have evolved substantially since the emergence of the world wide web to include those who were once strangers to the profession. Amateur journalists, bloggers, mobile app designers, programmers, web analytics managers, and others have become part of journalism, influencing the process of journalism from news production to distribution. These technology-oriented strangers—those who have not belonged to traditional journalism practice but have imported their qualities and work into it—are increasingly taking part in journalism, whether welcomed by journalists or shunned as interlopers. Yet, the labels that keep them at journalism’s periphery risk conflating them with much larger groups who are not always adding to the news process (e.g., bloggers, microbloggers) or generalizing them as insiders/outsiders. In this essay, we consider studies that have addressed the roles of journalistic strangers and argue that by delineating differences among these strangers and seeking representative categorizations of who they are, a more holistic understanding of their impact on news production, and journalism broadly, can be advanced. Considering the norms and practices of journalism as increasingly fluid and open to new actors, we offer categorizations of journalistic strangers as explicit and implicit interlopers as well as intralopers. In working to understand these strangers as innovators and disruptors of news production, we begin to unpack how they are collectively contributing to an increasingly un-institutionalized meaning of news while also suggesting a research agenda that gives definition to the various strangers who may be influencing news production and distribution and the organizational field of journalism more broadly.
Highlights
Over the last two decades they have come swiftly, a multitude of strangers to journalism working with and through new and innovative technologies and challenging the authority of news organizations and journalists alike while opening new pathways for journalism’s relevance and sustainability
Drawing on a limited number of existing studies, this essay has reflected on ways to provide categorizations for journalistic strangers who have had, and are having, an impact on the creation and distribution of news and journalism culture
These strangers vary in their influence on news production, and this essay illustrates that different categorizations of strangers may have different levels of influence on journalistic norms and practices based on the innovations they adopt and their positions, real or perceived, within journalism as a profession
Summary
Over the last two decades they have come swiftly, a multitude of strangers to journalism working with and through new and innovative technologies and challenging the authority of news organizations and journalists alike while opening new pathways for journalism’s relevance and sustainability. Bloggers, mobile app designers, programmers, and web analytics managers have joined an extensive and growing crowd of professionals who have, whether considered or not by journalists and news organizations to be journalists, introduced innovations into the news production process They have challenged traditional definitions of what it means to be a journalist and to produce news while augmenting a news production and distribution process that relies more than ever on outsider perspectives to institute engaging and sustained content. By first reviewing the state of research on innovation in journalism and its emphasis on individual actors as agents of change in terms of journalism, this essay offers a consideration of three categorizations of journalistic strangers before outlining how these strangers may be changing current epistemologies of journalism as well as the practice of journalism itself. This essay provides new means for media scholars and practitioners to unpack the complex changes journalistic strangers may have on journalistic theory and practice individually and collectively
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